Lately it seems we receive Teaser Trailer rumours only to have them refuted hours later. Ringer Spy Mike, however, has just furnished us with the first hard evidence against the existence of a Teaser Trailer for RoTK.

He writes:

I am head projectionist at our local movie theatre, and today we received a tube with 3 rolled teaser posters for Return of the King. Also, included with the posters was a sheet from New Line Cinema that explains that it is the teaser for Return of the King, notes that it is not for internet use and should be displayed immediately, and THEN goes on to say “There will NOT be a teaser trailer this summer”.

Update: Voronwe on Tolkien Online made a couple of very interesting points about this note. First, it has no logo or letterhead. It does, however, have a contact number which I have cropped off. Second - and much more pertinent - Karl Urban isn’t on the cast list.

Update 2: We’ve received two more copies of the note. Both copies have the same telephone number - and wording - on the contact section which I cropped out of the first.

I’ve compared the new ones pretty carefully to the original note we were sent - the details match as far as I can see - but they aren’t exact replicas with exact same smudges and so on.

We also received an independent confirmation on July 2 from another source. Ringer Spy Jeff - who contacted us about the T3 teaser trailer rumour got in touch with us again recently after being asked to investigate this rumour we were sent.

Someone on another board I’m on found some press bit from the UK saying the trailer would be attached to their release of The Hulk, which is July 18th, I believe. Mid-July is what everyone’s hearing, so it would seem that the best candidates for a US trailer release around that time would be Pirates (7/9), League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (7/11) or Seabiscuit. Remote possibilities include Bad Boys II (7/18) Tomb Raider II (7/25) or Spy Kids III (7/25).

The full trailer is apparently going to be released with New Line’s Secondhand Lions on 9/26.

This is what Jeff found out:

Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 23:59:22 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: ROTK Teaser Before T3

Well when I got to work today I talked with my manager, and she said that there’s not gonna be a trailer for ROTK until September, we got the posters today so I’m guessing there was something with them that said that. So it looks like no teaser, just a trailer after the summer.

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